Trump Speaks With Netanyahu, Seeking to Thaw U.S. Relations

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, center, in Jerusalem on Sunday. The Trump administration has signaled that it will move the United States embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.CreditCreditRonen Zvulun/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — As the Trump administration moved toward relocating the United States Embassy to Jerusalem, President Trump on Sunday invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to the White House early next month, working quickly to forge close ties with a crucial ally who was often at odds with his predecessor.

On Mr. Trump’s second full day in office, he and the prime minister discussed by telephone “ways to advance and strengthen the U.S.-Israel special relationship, and security and stability in the Middle East,” White House officials said. Mr. Trump also expressed an “unprecedented commitment to Israel’s security.”

The two discussed efforts to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, officials said. Both leaders described the discussion in friendly terms. Mr. Trump told reporters gathered in the East Room as he swore in senior White House officials that the conversation had been “very nice,” while Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement that it had been “very warm.”

Mr. Trump did not respond to questions about whether the two men had spoken about moving the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a campaign promise that has outsize symbolic significance for Israelis and Palestinians. Both regard the holy city as their rightful capital.

But Mr. Trump and his inner circle, including David Friedman, the bankruptcy lawyer he has nominated to be his ambassador to Israel, have made it clear that they intend to make the move. It is part of an effort to telegraph a stark break with former President Barack Obama’s policies, along with the nuclear deal with Iran and his opposition to Israeli settlement construction.

“They are very serious about this,” said Aaron David Miller, a vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents on the Middle East. “The question is not whether to, but how or when.”

Jerusalem is the seat of Israel’s government, but the American Embassy is situated in Tel Aviv, the country’s commercial center, on the theory that Jerusalem’s fate should be determined only as part of a broader peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. While United States policy holds that the embassy should be moved to Jerusalem — in line with a 1995 law enacted to do so — presidents in both parties have waived the measure on national security grounds, concluding that the move would prejudge the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The United States has long supported a two-state solution to the conflict, but Mr. Friedman has questioned that approach, and Mr. Trump has said Israelis should be able to keep building settlements in the West Bank, in defiance of a United Nations resolution passed in December.

In the call on Sunday, White House officials said Mr. Trump had told Mr. Netanyahu “that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be negotiated directly between the two parties, and that the United States will work closely with Israel to make progress towards that goal.” Mr. Trump has said he wants his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was sworn in on Sunday as his senior adviser, to lead that effort.

It is not clear what immediate action Mr. Trump will take to move the embassy. Mr. Friedman, who owns an apartment in Jerusalem, could live there and hold official meetings at the American Consulate in the city or at hotels nearby, allowing the administration to say it had followed through on the pledge to relocate. The president could also refrain from signing the waiver when it expires in June, in effect reinstituting the law that requires the United States to build an embassy in Jerusalem.

Either move would most likely be provocative both in the United States and around the world, cheering some American Jews and supporters of Israel but raising concerns among others that it would undermine the prospects for peace in the region.

“No matter how they try to explain it, it will send an unmistakable signal that we are validating the Israeli position that the whole of Jerusalem is a wholly owned Israeli enterprise,” Mr. Miller said. “This would shred American credibility and have a chilling effect” on any prospect of a peace effort.

David Makovsky, the director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Trump administration should make it clear that any move it makes on the embassy should not be read as a statement about the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“They’ll be more successful in minimizing the risks here if they make the delineation known both privately and publicly, that they’re not moving to presuppose the legal status of the Old City and East Jerusalem,” Mr. Makovsky said. “They need to make clear what this is, and what this is not.”

Mr. Trump’s conversation with Mr. Netanyahu came as he announced that he had begun reaching out to other allies, arranging meetings in the coming days with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico. He will hold his first meeting with a foreign leader on Friday, when Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain visits the White House.

Later on Sunday, the president hosted a reception for law enforcement officials who had helped with the inauguration, attended by James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I., whose email investigation of Hillary Clinton became a powerful subtext of the election.

Mr. Trump singled out Mr. Comey from across the Blue Room and summoned him, pulling him in and patting him on the back as the two shook hands.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Speaks With Netanyahu, Seeking to Thaw U.S. Relations. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe